81 réponses à ce sujet

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

sympathy4saren wrote...

My question is how an army of organics, even a galactic army, is going to pose any serious threat to the Reapers. Let's not forget how much it took to bring Sovereign down, and only then because Sovereign was desperate to stop Shepard from stopping the opening of the Citadel Relay and assumed control of Saren's corpse, leaving its natural body.

That right there is the beautiful part of my theory!

The Reapers are sentient spaceships.  Sentient Warships.  It's what they are.  Battles in space are battles on ground of their choosing.  If I learned anything from the Total War games, it's that if you battle a superior force at a time and place of your choosing, you can actually have an advantage over them.  For example, the Spartans at Thermopylae.  

:lol: 

Now fighting the Reapers in space, fleet to fleet?  Suicide.  The Council and allied races will get wiped the crap out.  But if the Council races choose their own battleground...  If the Council races allow the Reapers to attack the homeworlds one by one... then through a war of attrition, the Reapers can be defeated.  The organic armies just have to have a good plan and ball the size of suns. 

The "victory through defeat" plan relies on my crazy idea that the Reapers are here to gather all races and that to do that they essentially have to sort through the individuals of that race one by one, which means the Reapers have to land and engage on a battlefield that favors the organic races.  If the Council allows the Reapers to land and harvest homeworld by homeworld...  the Reapers can be thinned out on each world, eventually making them ineffective as an attack force, forcing them to route, or even become defeated and be destroyed.

Why doesn't there seem to be an endless supply of Reapers after 700 cycles?  Because some times in the past the equivalent Council races =have= figured this out.  They just never had Shepard to lead them.  Maybe they realized this too late, or they were too fractitious, or the rule of the galaxy has always been war between species, or they couldn't mount a capable enough force since they lacked mass effect relays to shuttle troops around.  Or the Reapers just beat them at an enormous cost in their own numbers.

Just my crazy theory for the week, but I'm totally right.  :lol:  

Modifié par RinpocheSchnozberry, 08 juin 2011 - 01:27 .

[oyukichan]

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

sympathy4saren wrote...

My question is how an army of organics, even a galactic army, is going to pose any serious threat to the Reapers. Let's not forget how much it took to bring Sovereign down, and only then because Sovereign was desperate to stop Shepard from stopping the opening of the Citadel Relay and assumed control of Saren's corpse, leaving its natural body.

That right there is the beautiful part of my theory!

The Reapers are sentient spaceships.  Sentient Warships.  It's what they are.  Battles in space are battles on ground of their choosing.  If I learned anything from the Total War games, it's that if you battle a superior force at a time and place of your choosing, you can actually have an advantage over them.  For example, the Spartans at Thermopylae.  

:lol: 

Now fighting the Reapers in space, fleet to fleet?  Suicide.  The Council and allied races will get wiped the crap out.  But if the Council races choose their own battleground...  If the Council races allow the Reapers to attack the homeworlds one by one... then through a war of attrition, the Reapers can be defeated.  The organic armies just have to have a good plan and ball the size of suns. 

The "victory through defeat" plan relies on my crazy idea that the Reapers are here to gather all races and that to do that they essentially have to sort through the individuals of that race one by one, which means the Reapers have to land and engage on a battlefield that favors the organic races.  If the Council allows the Reapers to land and harvest homeworld by homeworld...  the Reapers can be thinned out on each world, eventually making them ineffective as an attack force, forcing them to route, or even become defeated and be destroyed.

Why doesn't there seem to be an endless supply of Reapers after 700 cycles?  Because some times in the past the equivalent Council races =have= figured this out.  They just never had Shepard to lead them.  Maybe they realized this too late, or they were too fractitious, or the rule of the galaxy has always been war between species, or they couldn't mount a capable enough force since they lacked mass effect relays to shuttle troops around.  Or the Reapers just beat them at an enormous cost in their own numbers.

Just my crazy theory for the week, but I'm totally right.  :lol:  

I'm not arguing against your point, and maybe I am missing what you are trying to get at with the Spartans reference, but the Spartans were defeated at Thermopylae. They held the pass for a time, but they did lose. It always comes down to betrayal.

Personally, I think the Reapers have always needed stealth (the Citadel relay, harvesting planet by planet, even turning some Protheans against the rest of their race, i.e. indoctrination) because even they know, with proper warning, galactic life can team up against them and defeat them. The Reapers are intimidating, yes, but not invincible.

[Ice Cold J]

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

Ice Cold J wrote...

"In the end, what does it matter? Your survival lies not in understanding them, but in stopping them."

- Vigil

Good catch!  However, the source of that quote is like the guy that was too afraid to cross a mountain pass with the rest of his tribe.  He might be like "Dont' go over the mountains!  People who go over them never come back!"  So the next tribe to wander along might be like, damn, it's cold and snowy, but we're surviving.  I guess we'll listen to this one last survivor! 
Meanwhile, every other tribe that has ever crossed the mountains ends up in a city called Orgyopolis and are treated as great man and women for having come out of the Dread Mountains alive.

The point being the Vigil was made by survivors of a race that was being reaped...  Vigil had a definite bias toward what was going on.  Maybe Vigil was totally and completely wrong.

I LOVE that Vigil quote.

You speak the truth.

However, Sovereign is much less, "encouraging" than Harbinger is. He says things like "I am the vanguard of your DESTRUCTION." and "You exist because we allow it and you will end/die because we demand it."

There's the argument that, once humanity proved it's worth/potential by killing a Reaper, Harbinger was like, "Let's bring them on board/add them to our ranks/legion," but I'm still standing by the impression I got from Sovereign. He's the only Reaper we've ever talked to directly (unless you count Harbinger in Arrival).

Actually, in that little discourse with Harbinger, he claims that we will "die in vain," our "leaders will beg to serve them," our "greatest civilizations are doomed to fall," and our "species will fall."

Not very promising, is it?

[Abirn]

They don't want to mix up the genetic pools? but at the same time they have been mashing together different species (see: cannibals from the demos)

[felipejiraya]

I think it's a good theory...looks like the machines from the Matrix trilogy harvesting people for they own survival.

Ice Cold J wrote...

"In the end, what does it matter? Your survival lies not in understanding them, but in stopping them."

- Vigil

Hell yes, we can understand them after they're toast;

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

Ice Cold J wrote...

However, Sovereign is much less, "encouraging" than Harbinger is. He says things like "I am the vanguard of your DESTRUCTION." and "You exist because we allow it and you will end/die because we demand it."

Individual minds aren't preserved.  They become mooshed into the gestalt racial conciousness that resides inside the Reaper.

Actually, in that little discourse with Harbinger, he claims that we will "die in vain,"

Right, because the individuals aren't surrendering and being mooshed into new Reaper.

our "leaders will beg to serve them," 

...But no one that gets harvested survives.  Even the leaders will go into the melt down pods.

our "greatest civilizations are doomed to fall," and our "species will fall."

Fall, yes.  And be processed into a Reaper.


Really, if they Reapers wanted to just wipe out every planet with sentients on it, they would just push asteroids into the planets and pick off the starships as they tried to escape.

[Bolboreta]

Reapers shouldn't be defeated and I have my own theory about this (I'm sure a lot of people have reached the same conclusion).

Everything has to do with eezo and dark energy. The use of eezo increases the amount of dark energy in the galaxy. Each time someone uses a biotic power, a mass effect core or a relay, it's consuming eezo and generating dark energy. Dark energy destabilizes stars, so they become supernovas too soon. Also, reapers are the only creature that can use this dark energy to survive and create other reapers.

This way, we could explain the whole plot. Reapers let organics use their technology to increase this dark energy. They wipe out organics when the amount is too high, before it makes every sun to explode, and they use the energy for themselves (they keep and modify some species too, but those are controlled by them). Once the rest of the organics disappear, the pool of eezo starts to recover with the remaining dark energy (the amount that reapers haven't consumed). That amount has been reduced to a number that estabilize stars again and the reapers go back to dark space to rest. This also explains why they haven't changed too much in so many years: they spend most of the time resting.

It's all about survival.

[wr3xl3ss]

Quite honestly, I disagree. I dunno if it has been mentioned already in this thread, but IMO, the Reapers act as some sort of filter, harvesting and "processing" the strongest race into the next gen of Reapers, which is why they had the Collectors and their unusual requests for rare individuals, within different species, all with some kind of abnormality while compared with the whole.

[Occulo]

I wonder if luring Reapers to stars about to go supernova would be effective at destroying large numbers of them. Like just pump some dark energy into the sun and then let it explode.

[Bolboreta]

wr3xl3ss wrote...

Quite honestly, I disagree. I dunno if it has been mentioned already in this thread, but IMO, the Reapers act as some sort of filter, harvesting and "processing" the strongest race into the next gen of Reapers, which is why they had the Collectors and their unusual requests for rare individuals, within different species, all with some kind of abnormality while compared with the whole.

That's their way to evolve. They're machines, so they need to use organics to have some kind of evolution, which is needed to be capable of mantain the cycle every 50.000 years with a few casualties. That's why they target humans, because we're supposed to evolve faster than other species in the galaxy.

Nevertheless, it's just a theory. Maybe they're Shepard's parents :lol:

Modifié par Bolboreta, 09 juin 2011 - 03:42 .

[wr3xl3ss]

Bolboreta wrote...

wr3xl3ss wrote...

Quite honestly, I disagree. I dunno if it has been mentioned already in this thread, but IMO, the Reapers act as some sort of filter, harvesting and "processing" the strongest race into the next gen of Reapers, which is why they had the Collectors and their unusual requests for rare individuals, within different species, all with some kind of abnormality while compared with the whole.

That's their way to evolve. They're machines, so they need to use organics to have some kind of evolution, wich is needed to be capable of mantain the cycle every 50.000 years with a few casualties. That's why they target humans, because we're supposed to evolve faster than other species in the galaxy.

Nevertheless, it's just a theory. Maybe they're Shepard's parents :lol:

I am aware of that, which is why I wrote that mini-wall of text. =P

Either way, my poing is that they take the strongest and destroy the weakest. In the case of the protheans, it was fare more complicated however, since they were - apparently - the only race to anchieve a highly advanced tech status in their time.

[sympathy4saren]

Occulo wrote...

I wonder if luring Reapers to stars about to go supernova would be effective at destroying large numbers of them. Like just pump some dark energy into the sun and then let it explode.

They would know it was going supernova and go into FTL

[wr3xl3ss]

sympathy4saren wrote...

Occulo wrote...

I wonder if luring Reapers to stars about to go supernova would be effective at destroying large numbers of them. Like just pump some dark energy into the sun and then let it explode.

They would know it was going supernova and go into FTL

True. The energy readings for something before going supernova would be just crazy... I find it hard to believe they'd fail to notice it.

[NewWaveFascist]

Occulo wrote...

I wonder if luring Reapers to stars about to go supernova would be effective at destroying large numbers of them. Like just pump some dark energy into the sun and then let it explode.

I always thought that would be an interesting way to end the trilogy; humanity sacrificing their home to save the galaxy.

[sympathy4saren]

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

sympathy4saren wrote...

My question is how an army of organics, even a galactic army, is going to pose any serious threat to the Reapers. Let's not forget how much it took to bring Sovereign down, and only then because Sovereign was desperate to stop Shepard from stopping the opening of the Citadel Relay and assumed control of Saren's corpse, leaving its natural body.

That right there is the beautiful part of my theory!

The Reapers are sentient spaceships.  Sentient Warships.  It's what they are.  Battles in space are battles on ground of their choosing.  If I learned anything from the Total War games, it's that if you battle a superior force at a time and place of your choosing, you can actually have an advantage over them.  For example, the Spartans at Thermopylae.  

:lol: 

Now fighting the Reapers in space, fleet to fleet?  Suicide.  The Council and allied races will get wiped the crap out.  But if the Council races choose their own battleground...  If the Council races allow the Reapers to attack the homeworlds one by one... then through a war of attrition, the Reapers can be defeated.  The organic armies just have to have a good plan and ball the size of suns. 

The "victory through defeat" plan relies on my crazy idea that the Reapers are here to gather all races and that to do that they essentially have to sort through the individuals of that race one by one, which means the Reapers have to land and engage on a battlefield that favors the organic races.  If the Council allows the Reapers to land and harvest homeworld by homeworld...  the Reapers can be thinned out on each world, eventually making them ineffective as an attack force, forcing them to route, or even become defeated and be destroyed.

Why doesn't there seem to be an endless supply of Reapers after 700 cycles?  Because some times in the past the equivalent Council races =have= figured this out.  They just never had Shepard to lead them.  Maybe they realized this too late, or they were too fractitious, or the rule of the galaxy has always been war between species, or they couldn't mount a capable enough force since they lacked mass effect relays to shuttle troops around.  Or the Reapers just beat them at an enormous cost in their own numbers.

Just my crazy theory for the week, but I'm totally right.  :lol:  

I disagree. You stated that "if the counsel allows the Reapers to land on each homeworld"

The Reapers don't need permission, nor are they going to care about any force trying to stop them. You have no choice in allowing them that. They are going to do what they want, when they want. They took over Earth pretty dang quick.

I admire your passion, and respect your theory, however.

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

sympathy4saren wrote...

I disagree. You stated that "if the counsel allows the Reapers to land on each homeworld"

The Reapers don't need permission, nor are they going to care about any force trying to stop them. You have no choice in allowing them that. They are going to do what they want, when they want. They took over Earth pretty dang quick.

I admire your passion, and respect your theory, however.

Ah!  I wasn't clear.  My bad.  What I meant was: Rather than fight the Reapers in space, the Council races should just withdraw armies to specific planetary surfaces and wait until the Reapers came for the planet.  If my theory is right, then the Reapers will mosey on down to the planet surface and start gathering up and sorting the individuals of different races.  That's what I meant by the Council races should choose their own battlegrounds and fight the Reapers where the organic races have a  real advantage

[Chibi Elemental]

I have a feeling they were looking for shepard not just because of what he/she represents but the fact that if they had shepard it would make them stronger as a whole, I would not be surprised if the reapers are vary selective about who or what they processes. Like collectors who want only the strongest brightest and most successful children so to speak, the rest are turned into husks or even mind slaves like the collectors.

[Gibb_Shepard]

Wouldn't it be awesome if we never find out the reaper's true intentions?

Like maybe we get an inclination by the end of the game, but not a full-blown reason? IMO, that'd be terrific. It'll really preserve the mystery of the reapers.

[Ice Cold J]

OK. I'm sorry I didn't fully read your original post and I didn't know exactly what you were arguing.

I thought you were one of those "The Reapers 'harvesting' us is a good thing" people.

Now, I see otherwise.

Yes. I believe they "harvest' races to reproduce. I think that's what ME2 was driving at with the Reaper larva at the end.

In the end, I agree with you that they are not trying to "kill us," per se. BUT, if we are "harvested," it also implies that we are killed in so much as we as individuals, or even as sentient beings, cease to exist.

So, why would we not try to keep that from happening?

[Medhia Nox]

Well - Shepard does talk about the laser that was designed that killed the Reaper in ME 2. A comment is made that it was some races last act of defiance - and that it likely was developed too late.

So - we've got Reaper killing boom canons - so I think I'm gonna strap one to the back of every Krogan and then Wrex and I are gonna mess up some cuttlefish.

===

I agree with Gibb_Shepard. We should never find out the Reaper's true intentions.

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

Ice Cold J wrote...

OK. I'm sorry I didn't fully read your original post and I didn't know exactly what you were arguing.

No worries.  HIGH FIVE!  :lol:

In the end, I agree with you that they are not trying to "kill us," per se. BUT, if we are "harvested," it also implies that we are killed in so much as we as individuals, or even as sentient beings, cease to exist.

So, why would we not try to keep that from happening?

Oh, people totally have to try and preserve themselves.  The Reapers =are= destroying all life in a sense.

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

Gibb_Shepard wrote...

Wouldn't it be awesome if we never find out the reaper's true intentions?

Like maybe we get an inclination by the end of the game, but not a full-blown reason? IMO, that'd be terrific. It'll really preserve the mystery of the reapers.

In the case of Tali's face... I'm all for the mystery.  In the case of the Reaper's purpose and goals... I totally want to know.  I'm way to interested in that aspect of the lore.  :happy::happy::happy:

[RinpocheSchnozberry]

Medhia Nox wrote...

Well - Shepard does talk about the laser that was designed that killed the Reaper in ME 2. A comment is made that it was some races last act of defiance - and that it likely was developed too late.

I can see that happening.  But how are those cannons going to be made?  It would take months.  But, then again, destroying Reapers is going to take a long time with the methods I've suggested.  Maybe thos cannons would speed things up at least.

[Fortlowe]

What if the Reapers are attempting to 'save us'? The Tali recruitment mission brought up dark matter killing stars as a possible threat. Perhaps there is some massive cyclical cosmic event involving dark matter that would completely wipe out all life in the galaxy and what the Reapers are doing is meant to preserve as much of it as they can in the only manner that is possible?

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

I wonder about powering an asteroid into a mass relay in a system they are harvesting?

I don't think the Reapers are trying to "save us" due to that dark matter killing stars. I think Cerberus might be behind that. Harvesting to "save us" from that would require a huge leap of logic concerning quantum mechanics.

Another thing is that according to Vigil it took a few centuries for the Reapers to completely obliterate them. The war lasted decades.